Sofia Coppola’s biopic “Priscilla”: Priscilla: The most famous supporting character

Capturing the lives of women in golden cages, their loneliness and isolation as well as their struggle for their own identity on the screen is one of the subjects that Sofia Coppola likes to devote herself to. The daughter of the world-famous director Francis Ford Coppola can certainly understand certain aspects of the inner distress of her film heroines.

In “Lost in Translation,” for example, a student in a luxury hotel in Tokyo ponders her marriage to a popular scene photographer. In Coppola’s historical drama “Marie Antoinette,” the archduchess, who was married at the age of 14, mainly indulges in luxurious idleness in the Palace of Versailles before she gets to know reality through the guillotine.

So it was actually only a matter of time before Coppola would adapt Priscilla Presley’s bestseller “Elvis and Me”, which was published in 1985. In it, Elvis’ former “child bride” describes how she fell in love with one of the most sought-after men in the world and soon moved to Graceland with him. But while the King went out into the world and had numerous affairs, the 16-year-old was condemned to a bitterly lonely life on his estate. Through ball for Coppola.

The year is 1959. 14-year-old Priscilla, convincingly portrayed by 25-year-old Cailee Spaeny, is bored at the counter of a snack bar in an army compound in Wiesbaden. As she sucks on her straw, a cover version of Frankie Avalon’s “Venus” – recorded by Phoenix, the band of Coppola’s husband Thomas Mars – plays.

However, you can’t hear Elvis songs in the film – there was no permission for that. But Mars and Coppola turn this hardship into a virtue worth listening to.

A man approaches Priscilla and invites her to a party at Elvis’ house that evening. There is obviously a long, disgusting tradition in Germany of feeding very young girls to older men. Elvis does his military service at the airbase – as does Priscilla’s stepfather. After some hesitation, her parents allow her to accept the invitation.

Excited Priscilla is blown away when Elvis, ten years her senior, flirts with her. He even confides in her, the ninth grader, how much he misses his recently deceased mother! It gets under your skin how Spaeny plays the romanticized infatuation of the introverted girl. And then the first kiss with the globally idolized sex symbol! Coppola brilliantly underlines this with the languorous song “Crimson and Clover” by Tommy James and The Shondells.

Elvis is portrayed by Jacob Elordi, who is much more believable than King impersonator Austin Butler in Baz Luhrmann’s “Elvis” film. In Luhrmann’s biopic, Priscilla only flits through the picture a few times – you can’t tell that she’s still a teenager and it’s not discussed. Coppola makes Priscilla, who was actually a minor at the time, the main character. She sensitively explains what it actually feels like to grow up in a patriarchal society, cut off from the outside world, on a luxurious property. Set design, costume and make-up bring the Graceland cage breathtakingly to life.

Coppola’s Elvis is a narcissist who terrorizes his young wife with his obsession with control. He forbids her from taking a job. Once he freaks out during a pillow fight when Priscilla acts “too manly.” Another time, Elvis throws a chair at her head because she timidly expressed her opinion. He also dictates her hair color and her dark eye make-up. So it hurts your soul when you later have to watch her obediently put on her spider-like eyelashes before the birth of their daughter, when she was already in labor. To their chagrin, Elvis hardly sleeps with his “Cilla” and seems to have a Madonna-whore complex. And then the master of the house and his entourage always set off on film shoots, tours and affairs – Priscilla’s “I love you” whispered farewell always remains unrequited. When her husband is at home, he sometimes takes her to lavish parties. So that she doesn’t fall asleep the next day at the Catholic girls’ school in Memphis, he supplies her with pills that he himself has long been addicted to.

The audience experiences all of this from Priscilla’s transfigured inner perspective, which gradually crumbles. It’s hard to bear seeing no one put a stop to her husband’s abusive behavior.

To Dolly Parton’s “I Will Always Love You”, which Elvis probably sang for his ex immediately after the divorce, Priscilla finally leaves her husband and Graceland after 13 years. Unfortunately, the film ends too abruptly here. It would have been nice to see a little more of Priscilla’s life afterwards. Because of this directorial decision, she ends up being just a minor character in the life of Elvis – whom she incomprehensibly still loves.

»Priscilla«: USA, Italy, 2023. Director and writer: Sofia Coppola. Starring: Cailee Spaeny, Jacob Elordi, Dagmara Dominczyk, Ann Beaulieu, Ari Cohen. 113 min. Release date: January 4th.